This paper examines the issue of estimating recurrent costs associated with capital projects in the investment budget. It is intended to help overcome budget planning problems which give rise to the chronic under-funding of maintenance and operating costs typical in some developing economies....

If the marginal gains from investment in physical capital depend positively on knowledge, but a household cannot hire skilled labor to compensate for low skills, then even if it has access to credit, the household will achieve lower returns than an educated household. If, as is common, the...

Dracunculiasis (or Guinea worm disease) was endemic in several African countries as well as in India, Pakistan, and Yemen. The past decade, however, has seen a remarkable decline in the incidence of dracunculiasis as a result of the Global Dracunculiasis Eradication Campaign. The authors compare...

The author argues for a shift in the focus of economic analysis of projects. First, project analysts need to make full use of project information, especially identifying the source of the divergence between market prices and economic costs as well as the source of the divergence between economic...

The authors analyze wage determination and gender discrimination in Romania using the 1994 Romanian Household survey. They estimate wages for men and women in urban and rural areas using a Heckman selection model. They analyze gender discrimination in offered wages, to address the methodological...

The elderly in Russia have often been among those least able to cope with all the changes that have taken place during the transition. Unlike the situation prior to reform-when pensions were stable-they now face considerable uncertainty. If they have not been in poverty, many have been close to...

The author argues that public and private pillars are essential for a well-functioning pension system. Public pillars, funded or unfounded, offer basic benefits that are independent of the performance of financial markets. Since financial markets suffer from prolonged, persistent, and large...

The author describes a specialized and less data-intensive version of the Integrated Macroeconomic Model for Poverty Analysis (IMMPA) developed by Ag?or, Izquierdo, and Fofack (2003) and Ag?or, Fernandes, Haddad, and van der Mensbrugghe (2002). The mini-IMMPA focuses only on the"real"side but it...

Teams from two institutions studied the economic impact of health status on productivity and income. They studied whether onchocercal skin disease caused economic damage to the labor force at a coffee plantation in southwest Ethiopia, and how much. The research team estimated the daily wage...

Labor market integration is typically assumed to improve welfare in the absence of distortions, because it allows labor to move to where returns are highest. The author examines this result in a simple general equilibrium model in the presence of a common property resource: social capital....